The FlyBi Project:

About

Drosophila melanogaster genome
is arguably the best-annotated multi-cellular eukaryotic genome and
yet, there remains much to be learned about the functions of
Drosophila proteins.
Moreover, an ultimate goal of biology is not just to understand
individual protein activities but also to develop quantitative models
that can describe biological systems on a global scale—i.e.
to gain a system-scale
understanding. This requires large-scale application of approaches in
the areas of functional genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics.

Mass
spectrometry-based and other studies are helping to uncover what
proteins are expressed and what protein complexes are present in
Drosophila.
Binary data are required to distinguish direct from indirect
relationships, providing important refinement to our understanding of
protein-protein interaction networks.

The
goal of the “FlyBi” project (for Drosophila
binary protein interaction
project) is to perform a
state-of-the-art, high-throughput, quality-controlled binary protein
interaction analysis with ~10,000 Drosophila
open reading frames (ORFs),
representing about 2/3 of the proteome, to generate a high-confidence
binary interaction network.

To
limit false discovery, prior to screening we will use positive and
random reference sets of interactions to establish optimal vectors
and parameters for the large-scale screen. We will further limit
false discovery by performing multiple iterations of the screen.
Integration of the results of this robust binary interaction analysis
with other datasets will generate a high-confidence “interactome”
and help guide choices for further molecular genetic investigations.